Obama's Lone Star long shot

President Barack Obama’s campaign is heeding the political siren song of Texas, telling supporters he hopes to make a real effort in a state where the growing Hispanic electorate has long raised — then dashed — Democratic hopes.

Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, Jim Messina, speaking to big-money Lone Star State Democrats at closed-door meetings in Austin and Dallas in March, predicted Obama could make a “serious play” in the cornerstone of GOP presidential politics, according to people in attendance.

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And Obama’s senior adviser David Plouffe has told fellow Democrats the nation’s second most populous state might add to his national “map” of contested states, arguing that the huge increase in voting-eligible Hispanic Texans in recent years could bring the state into play sooner than expected.

On the surface, their rationale seems compelling. The state’s population is about 35 percent Hispanic, almost identical to California’s proportion. The voting-age population in Texas is growing faster than almost anywhere else in the U.S. — with an estimated 1.2 million eligible minority voters, most of them Spanish speakers, added to the state’s population between 2008 and 2012, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Those trends have been emerging for a decade, but Democrats have, by and large, been unable to capitalize on them, owing to the state’s geography and abysmal voter registration and turnout patterns among Latinos. Obama talked enthusiastically about contesting Texas in 2008 but virtually abandoned the state to Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain as Election Day drew near, eventually losing by a million votes and 12 percentage points.

Texans wonder whether the same thing will happen this time: Is Obama just messing with Texas, or will he spend the $15 million to $25 million needed to mount a serious effort to boost Hispanic support and turnout?

“Look, if he’s really going to be a billion-dollar candidate, why not spend some of that money on Texas?” said Marc Campos, a Houston-based Democratic political consultant who is encouraging the campaign to go all in.

Obama previewed his public pitch to the state during his first visit as president to the Texas-Mexico border Tuesday, calling for a balanced immigration policy that offers a path to citizenship for undocumented workers and continued enforcement of the borders.

But the most compelling part of his message to Latinos was left largely unsaid: He’s already on record as strongly opposing the Arizona law aimed at cracking down on illegal immigrants with roadside searches, and he’s spoken out against GOP efforts to require voters, in Texas and elsewhere, to show photo IDs at voting booths.

California-based consultant Ace Smith, who managed Hillary Clinton’s March 2008 Texas primary victory over Obama, said the logistics of the state — with the Latino population scattered throughout almost every county — make it far more expensive to organize there than in other states with high Latino populations.

“It’s a long shot, but it’s by no means impossible,” he told POLITICO.